By Aishwarya Jayasankar
"...and yet it should be lovely, even if there would be none to attend my funeral."
I end my words, holding them in metaphors quiet
and with a period, I turn a poet.
Poets,
species that live in expressions and exasperations loud,
in between verses and over the waning moon, burnt out stars and a cloud,
pulling their hair out at the beauty
of days where the cherry-blossoms carry the wind in sway,
and of grief that survived to see another such day,
grasping onto the charm
of moments of crippling frustration that will one day turn into victory raves
and of the ones that slowly crept into their resting graves,
walking the tales
of suffering and resilience along those parallel streets,
skipping between each with the dream in a child's game and oh the treats;
here I mix my bloody bruises with the blue in my ink
and grow violets around my aching heart and as they knot,
all of them now things of beauty, are they not?
And just like that,
in the midst of it all
I become God, master to all-
the fallible deity
of the words, pauses and notes I lace,
indeed, what a place!
In that empty power,
I reign and laugh, as my hurt in deep burrows lay,
its sound a mimicry, blades on hardened clay.
Laughs fall into vacuum and sink...
but well, don't Gods get lonely too, whatever won,
in their high thrones and a golden halo they share with none?
A hushed wish, almost ashamed, lightly lurks
like dust that shines in sunlight beams.
Was it always there like that? So it seems.
There but never seen
until enlightenment loomed.
There. To be the muse, a wish long bloomed!
The gnawing need to be the object of art
quietly lands all over my omnipresent mind
in flutters, seeking to find,
assertive and delicate the dance
as a life's worth of yearning yearns in gradual pain,
am I human again?
Art holds me in its tender palms
going along with my charades as I play God,
and I see my language, loved and flawed.
To be it, to inspire it
must mean to be seen in whole, glory and bane,
am I human again?
Will only my violets adorn my tomb
if I don't flourish art
within an other's barren heart?
Will I die at the pinnacle of this pain
with a victory flag of an existence unknown
pinned to my chest, then freezing and now alone?
Oh maybe I won't! Or maybe I will!
But the palms that hold me shall remain in its verity
and I will try, in all the lonely anguish and prayers I mutter to myself, being a deity,
devotees turning companions and hierarchies turning into unions;
yet a hovering sting shall pierce my ribs feral,
and yet it should be lovely, even if there would be none to attend my funeral.